Drawing the tricycle

I have, as I wrote in my last post, real difficulty with learning 3d modelling software. Every system I've tried has a really steep learning curve, the commercial systems are extremely expensive making them very hard for me to evaluate, and some of my cognitive quirks just get triggered when trying to use them.

So trying (yet again) to evaluate the options while I'm not at all well is probably a fool move. I've been trying this morning, and, as usual, failing miserably. So this is just documenting where I'm up to.

There's an online commercial CAD system called Onshape. I tried to sign up to it, but their sign-up system didn't work (OK, it has now, but I'm exhausted). There's another by AutoCAD which is supposedly free, but it seems only suitable for toy projects. I looked at another commercial one but it was really taretted at architectural, not mechanical, design.

There is a CAD plugin for Blender, CAD Sketcher, but it's 2D only, and, while it might help me move my existing 2d drawings into Blender, my experience of trying to learn Blender (and I have really tried, over years) is that it's very hard.

I tried FreeCAD for more than an hour, and literally could not get my 2d sketch aligned with the vertical plane. I believe that the Mosquito tricycle design was done in FreeCAD, and I believe I have a copy of that somewhere, so it's probably worth perservering with a bit, but unless I can find someone locally who can give me a tutorial it's not for me.

I've installed OpenSCAD, which describes itself as 'The Programmers Solid 3D CAD Modeller', which might suit me; and I've found someone's recumbent tricycle project, which at least gives me something to start with; but I haven't even started trying to evaluate it.

There's another I've downloaded, SolveSpace, which sounds similar, but I haven't even looked at it.

That's all I can do today.

Share on social media

I'm no longer offering links to kleptocrat owned social media. If you're still using it, please think about whether you should be.